


Heart of Wire

by Downward Stroke (casual_distance)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: (Jack's past), Alternate Universe - Canon, Android Jack, Angst, Anxiety, Falling In Love, Friendship, Gen, Literal Hockey Robot Jack, M/M, Suicidal Ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 17:20:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6916411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casual_distance/pseuds/Downward%20Stroke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack’s programming has been changing ever since he was sent to Samwell, but it’s different than the last time this happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart of Wire

**Author's Note:**

> Imagine my surprise when I couldn’t find any fic about literal Hockey Robot!Jack when [literal Hockey Robot!Jack was almost canon](http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/post/108887625827)! I just… _needed_ there to be at least one in the world.

Jack pushed his helmet down and felt it click into place. He blinked a couple of times and his sensors came on, flickering rapidly before settling into the warm, green glow that only he would see. As he glanced over at the opposing team, his retinas zoomed in on each player, identifying them and pulling up their recorded stats along with any personal notes he’d made during previous games.

A red flag on one of the big guys caught his attention and Jack skated over to Bittle’s side and rested a hand on his shoulder.

“Watch out for Anders; he likes to go for dirty checks.”

Bittle frowned and stared over at the circle of players, their green and gold jerseys contrasting against the ice. Beneath his hand, Jack felt Bittle’s shoulders hunch up.

“Hey,” Jack said, waiting for him to look up before he continued, “don’t forget: I got your back.”

Bittle smiled widely, eyes shining. Something tightened in Jack’s chest. With one last pat to Bittle’s shoulder, he skated away. He started a diagnostic on the circuitry in his abdomen while he called everyone into a huddle. As they broke, the results came back: everything functioning within normal parameters.

Jack hadn’t expected a different result, and it was one more worry to pile into the back of his mind. 

 

* * *

 

Jack listened to the heavy thumping of the music as it echoed through the house, vibrating the floor beneath his feet. He sat on the edge of his bed, power cord running from the pocket on his side to the wall. He didn’t really need to charge up, not this soon, but he liked to do it after a game. He liked to feel the energy pouring back into him, pulsing in time with the music. He didn’t know if it was… well, he couldn’t say his imagination- Jack didn’t have one- but he didn’t really think the energy from the outlet worked that way.

Jack startled when a knock came on his door. Now that his attention was outward, Jack could hear the clumsy footsteps and the soft humming from just outside his door. Bittle knocked again.

“Jack?” he called, words slurring.

“One second.” Jack stood and unplugged his cord, winding it back into his body. He soothed his synthetic skin over the opening and checked it in the mirror before opening the door. 

Bittle stumbled into him, collapsing as his support was taken away from him. His bare cheek pressed hotly against Jack’s naked chest. Bittle make a strange squawking noise, his hands coming up to fumble at Jack’s waist, and Jack could feel Bittle’s skin heating where it was pressed against him. Jack frowned down at him as Bittle managed to find his footing and straighten up. Without thinking, Jack reached out to cup Bittle’s cheek, taking his temperature. Bittle stared up at him, eyes wide, his face flushed red. His core temperature was normal, despite how hot his skin felt. Jack dropped his hand.

“Did you need something, Bittle?” Jack asked.

Bittle’s face lit up, some of the red receding. “You should come down! We won! You won!”

“Bittle-“

Bittle flapped his hands. “I know, I know- team effort. You should celebrate with the team then.”

“I like to recharge after a game,” Jack said, smiling slightly.

Bittle returned it with a blinding one of his own. “Then I’ll recharge with you.” He scooted past Jack into his room and plopped down on his bed. 

Jack sighed and closed the door. He turned around to find Bittle frowning around his room.

“What?”

“What exactly do you _do_?” he asked, then continued on without waiting for a reply. “I like to bake- well- of _course_ you know that-“ Bittle laughed, falling back into Jack’s bed. “I also like to listen to music- and you’d better not say one thing about that, Mr. Zimmermann; don’t think I don’t-“

Jack settled into his desk chair, listening absently as Bittle continued to talk, hands waving in the air with emphasis, his words slurring with accent and drunkenness. The music continued to thump up through the floorboards. Jack checked his power- 87%, not as high as he might like, but certainly not low enough to cause concern. He sent a wistful glance to the power outlet and then focused on Bittle. 

Amusement, fondness, and another strange, strong feeling Jack didn’t understand welled up in him. His chest tightened again, but instead of worrying about it or running a diagnostic, Jack just let himself feel it. He was barely aware of the smile on his face, but the logs later would show it had been there the entire time Bittle was in his room, from the time he’d stumbled in to the time Jack had carried him across the hall, Bittle snoring into his chest.

 

* * *

 

The thing about Jack’s programming was that it was intended to adapt. It had been meant to adapt on the ice- letting Jack analyze opponents and draw conclusions about their behavior, but instead of relying on anticipated data- favorite moves, how often and when during a game the player scored, known weaknesses- some programming had been added to adjust for the human factor- to adjust for the days when someone played better or worse than usual, to adjust for new techniques, for spontaneous decisions.

No one had anticipated that his programming would decide that these things should also apply to Jack, that the human factor should be part of Jack himself in order for him to understand it better.

Jack was a thing of wires and circuitry. He was built to be the best, to analyze data and draw conclusions, to use those conclusions to act instead of react, to anticipate and intercept. They knew that, even with the coding to adjust for it, the human factor could still trump solid programming. They just didn’t know that, for a thing that was supposed to do one thing and do it well, _not_ doing it and knowing he wasn’t doing it would have consequences.

With each missed pass, each missed goal, each unexpected and unanticipated reaction from an opponent, Jack grew more worried, worked his programming harder. He began to fiddle with his own circuitry, began to make changes to the coding, trying to determine how to best meet the goals set out by his creators.

It never worked.

So when Parse came to him, full of loud laughter and exceptional at encouraging Jack to forget about his worries, to encourage Jack to ignore the things that bothered him, Jack tried. He tried to follow Parse’s example, to let himself be drawn into Parse’s jubilance, but it sat in the back of his mind, in the periphery of his programming. On the bottom of every screen, whether he wanted it there or not, Jack could see a tally- points missed, passes missed, games lost.

Jack never knew if he did it on purpose. He knew what that line of code was meant to do and where he should have put it. He didn’t know why he didn’t double check its location or the parameters of the query. He didn’t know if he closed his eyes on purpose when he hit go. He just did it.

It took months to restore Jack’s programming. Bob and Alicia Zimmermann, Jack’s owners, had been told that it would be better to wipe Jack completely, that so many changes had been made, it was unlikely they could ever restore him to what he’d been before. Bob and Alicia refused. They liked Jack. He had come to be like a son to them, and they weren’t ready to let him go.

They stood together in the darkened lab, Jack spread across a table, wires connecting him to multiple computers. Bob wrapped an arm around Alicia's shoulders and she tipped her head against his.

 _"What should we do? About him, I mean?"_ Bob asked in Québécois, voice pitched low. 

_"We should send him to Samwell,"_ Alicia answered. _"He's only ever known hockey. Perhaps we should show him there's more to life."_

Bob considered. "Okay,” he agreed. “Okay."

 

* * *

 

Jack was wire and metal and soldered joints. Jack was electricity tethered into synthetic skin.

Jack did not have a heart. He did not have lungs. He did not even have vocal cords.

 

* * *

 

Samwell was lonely at first. There were no teammates to slap him on the back, no Parse to chirp him into a night out on the town. Jack would wander the campus and ignore the wide-eyed stares and the whispers that followed him around. He would duck his head, pulling his cap low over his face, and walk a little faster. It wasn't until hockey started that Jack found himself falling into step with others.

It was Shitty first, slinging his bag across the table where Jack sat alone and hunched over a book.

"Brah, you got to embrace the team spirit," Shitty said. He set his elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand, raising his eyebrows expectantly at Jack.

Jack stared back, uncertain how to meet that expectation. "Team spirit?" he asked.

"Haus party, man. You got to let it all go. Shake your hair loose. Embrace the beer pong."

Jack frowned. "I don't drink."

"Dude." Shitty stared at him for a long moment, then shrugged. "That's cool. Do you dance?”

 

* * *

 

The first time Jack became aware of himself as something not-human, Jack had been six months old. He'd stood in his room, naked except for his underwear, his charging cord stretching from his side to the wall socket. He recharged every night, but this night, it made him realize that he was different. 

He had the body of a 15 year old, a child just beginning to grow into adulthood. When he asked, Bob told him that he would grow. Jack had considered that. 

"How will I grow?" he asked. He watched Bob eat from his plate of food, watched him chew and swallow. Jack pressed a hand to his stomach- but he had no stomach, no internal organs as such. He had no hunger, no body that craved things. "Will the lab make me grow?"

Bob stopped eating. He never answered, but that was what happened. On an irregular schedule, Jack found himself in the lab that made him and there they would adjust his height and his bulk and reprogram him to compensate for the differences.

Jack started researching human development, curious. Humans, he found, marked things with milestones: first smile, first word, first step. First kiss, first love, first time. First job, first car, first house.

Jack thought about these things. He tried to smile in the mirror, but it came out a grimace. The sharpening lines of his face made him look serious, and he was serious, he thought. So he did not try to smile, and he stopped worrying about human milestones in favor of hockey milestones.

It was only later, much later, that Jack decided those milestones might be worthwhile after all.

 

* * *

 

Humans smile for the first time in infancy. Anywhere from one and half to three months, Jack had read.

Jack was six years old when he smiled for the first time.

Shitty kissed him on the mouth for it. He didn't know it was Jack's first time smiling ever, but it was the first time Shitty had seen him smile since coming to Samwell.

 

* * *

 

Laughter comes shortly after smiling for humans. It took Jack another year to laugh out loud.

Ransom and Holster flanked him, reaching behind him and in front of him as they fought over their phones, sending texts to their other team members and the groupchat. Jack's phone buzzed steadily in his pocket, vibrating against his hip. 

Someone slapped a phone free, sending it flying through the air. Ransom and Holster both scuffled for it, knocking each other over, tripping over their own feet, kicking the phone across the ground and into river.

Jack tossed his head back and laughed as Ransom and Holster watched it sink.

 

* * *

 

Curiosity is innate in humans. Jack was math and science, facts and figures and statistical probabilities. Lardo was gut instinct and human emotion and she poked at those things, she made fun of them by pouring them onto canvases and building monuments of clay and metal and rhinestones to them.

She gave Jack his first camera. She pointed him to the world around them and told him to take pictures.

“Of what?”

“Whatever you want.”

“But-“

“Just point and click, Jack,” Lardo said, slinging her arm over his shoulders. “Don’t overthink it. Whatever catches your interest. Whatever makes you curious.”

“Curious.”

Lardo smiled. She bumped her body into his. “Yeah, Jacky boy. Point it at a person who makes you ask why they are the way they are.”

For Jack that was everyone, but he lifted his camera and pointed it at Lardo and snapped a shot of her with her mouth stretched wide around laughter, eyes shining with mirth.

 

* * *

 

Jack had no heart to beat away in his chest. He had no lungs to breath shakily with. He had no vocal cords to make soft, surprised sounds with.

With Bitty pressed tightly against him, Jack could feel the pounding of Bitty’s heart echoing through his circuitry. He could feel the way Bitty’s chest expanded and contracted against him, his breathing rapid and hot and desperate. Bitty gasped with each touch of Jack’s hands, and Jack- Jack did the same with each touch of Bitty’s.

He hadn’t known he could feel this way.

 

* * *

 

Parse had been neon lights and frantic movement and one confusing night where Parse had gotten himself off by rubbing up against Jack’s thigh, his mouth a hot press against Jack’s, his fingers sharp points of pressure against Jack’s scalp and shoulders and ribs.

Bitty was golden sunlight and lazy afternoons in a warm kitchen. He was scents that Jack couldn’t actually smell, but that his processor supplied anyway: cinnamon, sugar, apples, maple syrup. He was a steady pressure along the length of Jack’s body and slow kisses and quiet laughter shared between them.

He was-

 

* * *

 

“What?”

Bitty stared at him.

“I’m not human.”

Bitty frowned, his hands twitching restlessly against his legs. He looked away from Jack, his mouth opening and then closing. His eyes flicked wildly around Jack’s room, taking in the bare walls and shelves lined with textbooks and the empty places that someone who’d had a childhood would be filling with memories.

“Jack… That’s not a normal thing to believe,” Bitty said, finally looking at him, his tone gentle and kind, like he was trying to comfort Jack.

Jack couldn’t help the smile it drew out of him, though it made Bitty frown deeper. Jack stood and pulled off his shirt. He twisted his body so that Bitty could see and he opened the pocket in his side. His charging cord dangled out, metal prongs glinting in the light.

Bitty reared back, startled. His eyes went wide and he was breathing fast- too fast, Jack realized belatedly. He sat next to Bitty on the bed and cupped a hand to the back of his neck, encouraging him to press his face between his knees and to breathe.

Bitty didn’t flinch under his touch, but it still took him a long time to get his breathing under control. He slapped at Jack’s hand and sat back up. He stared at Jack, eyes darting back and forth, before he lowered his gaze and looked at the pocket.

He reached out a tentative hand, pausing just shy of touching.

“Can I?” he asked.

Jack nodded.

Bitty reached out and felt around the edges of it. He touched the cord, then pulled on it, drawing it out of Jack’s body with a gentle _whrr_.

Bitty let go and lurched off the bed. The cord snapped up into place. He stood in front of Jack, eyes wide.

“You’re not human.”

Jack shook his head. “Bitty-“ He reached out, but Bitty flinched away. Jack dropped his hand.

“This isn’t right,” Bitty said. “You have _a cord_ coming out of you!”

Jack didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything at all. He ducked his head and focused on tucking the offending cord away and smoothing his skin closed. He looked up again to find Bitty watching him, tears in his eyes. Jack pulled on his shirt and by the time the fabric slipped over his face, Bitty was gone.

 

* * *

 

Jack was wire and metal and soldered joints. Jack was electricity tethered into synthetic skin.

Jack did not have a heart. He did not have lungs. He did not even have vocal cords.

Jack did not have a heart, but sometimes it felt like he did.

 

* * *

 

It took two months of Bittle avoiding him, of Shitty climbing into his bed at night to ask leading questions Jack refused to answer, of Ransom and Holster filling uncomfortable silences with more noise than usual, of Chowder’s overflowing happiness kicked up a notch, of Lardo’s narrow-eyed observation.

Two months in which the little counter in the corner of his screen- games lost, games lost, _games lost_ \- did not get higher, because there was nothing else for him to do but what he was meant to do.

It was two months until Jack opened his bedroom door to find Bittle sitting on his bed, his face red, his eyes swollen. Jack stood in the doorway and watched Bittle watch him. He looked sad and lost and so, so confused. Jack didn’t say anything, but he closed his bedroom door and sat down at his desk and waited.

“Can I see it again?” Bittle asked.

Jack pulled up the hem of his shirt and peeled open the pocket. Bittle hesitated, but he knelt on the floor next to Jack’s feet and cradled his shirt out of the way. He stared for a long time, then glanced up at Jack.

“Does it hurt?”

“I don’t feel pain. Just pressure,” Jack answered.

Bittle swallowed noisily and reached out to touch it. He traced the edges of it, fingers dipping inside. He held the plug in his hand but didn’t pull it out. Instead he pressed it inside and closed the pocket. He frowned at the ragged edges of Jack’s skin until Jack reached down to press them flat. Bittle’s expression danced- curiosity, confusion, horror, interest- as the skin sealed shut, a seamless closure. Bittle ran the tips of his fingers over it.

“How do you-?”

Jack shrugged. He dropped his shirt and Bittle sat back on his heels. “Just do.”

Bittle drew in a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking up to meet Jack’s eyes. His brown ones swam with tears, and he sniffed loudly before looking away.

“I’m sorry I freaked out. This is just… it’s so far out of my _experience,_ Jack.”

“It’s okay, Bittle.”

Bittle gave a bitter laugh and rubbed his hands over his face. He pushed up off the floor and sat on Jack’s bed again. “You don’t even call me Bitty anymore,” he said, voice thick.

Jack shrugged and turned away. They sat in silence broken only by the gentle, wet noises Bittle made. Jack could sit there forever, but Bittle wanted something from him, so Jack turned to him. He met Bittle’s gaze and wondered how to tell him it was okay and to sound like he meant it.

Before he could speak, Bittle was off the bed and climbing into his lap, arms wrapped around his neck.

“I’m _sorry,_ Jack. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Jack hugged him back and he didn’t say _it’s okay_ again because it hadn’t been, not really, but it could be. Bittle seemed to feel it and he relaxed against Jack with a sigh.

“I missed you,” he said as he leaned away to look up at Jack’s face.

Jack quirked a smile at him, because for all that they hadn’t been friends, not in the beginning, they had become that. Jack had missed him too.

“Can I kiss you?” Bittle asked, face open and hopeful.

Jack hesitated and nearly relented when Bitty’s expression fell, but- “I can’t. Not if- not if you don’t mean it.”

When Bittle opened his mouth to protest, Jack added, “Not if you’ll change your mind.”

Bittle’s eyes went wide with understanding. He ducked his head back down to Jack’s shoulder and squeezed him.

“Okay. Okay, Jack.”

 

* * *

 

“You don’t eat,” Bitty announced one day from Jack’s bed where he’d stretched out with his schoolbooks, phone set in the crease.

Jack turned from his desk to raise an eyebrow in question.

“I noticed it, you know, then.” Bitty’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

“No, I don’t,” Jack agreed.

“I don’t know how I ever not noticed it,” Bitty commented. “It’s obvious once you see it.”

Jack shrugged. “Most people don’t. They take things for granted.”

“Huh.” Bitty pondered that while Jack returned to his homework.

 

* * *

 

“I’ve seen pictures of you when you were younger.”

“It’s- I was- well- altered, I guess.”

“So that it looked like you were growing up.”

“Yeah.”

 

* * *

 

“Can I ask…”

“What?”

“You missed the draft.”

Jack looked over at Bitty where he was curled up in bed with Jack. He’d taken to creeping into Jack’s room after everyone went to bed and peppering Jack with questions or rambling about his day. Jack liked it, but he’d known this question would come.

He rolled onto his back and spoke to the ceiling. “I’m programmed to do one thing, Bitty, and I didn’t understand why I wasn’t perfect at it.”

“You thought you should be.”

Jack shrugged. “I’m not human.”

“You were built by them though.”

Jack let that thought sit for a while, then pushed it aside to answer Bitty’s question. “I wasn’t on drugs or drinking- none of that affects me, but I was messing around with my programming.”

Bitty made a noise in the back of his throat. Jack knew he’d heard enough of Dex’s ranting to understand where this was going.

“I thought I’d found a problem script and I was going to delete it.”

The rest of the words stuck in his throat, and Jack wondered how he could be so close to human and still so far away. Bitty’s hand brushed against his shoulder, then settled on it, a steady pressure of warmth.

“How did you end up at Samwell?”

“Maman thought it would be good for me. Would give me something other than hockey to care about.”

“Do you think of her that way?”

“What way?”

“Do you think of her like a mother?”

Jack considered. “I… I don’t know. I don’t know that I have a frame of reference.”

Bitty made a questioning noise and Jack turned to look at him. He watched back, eyes dark in the dimness of the room. His cheeks were pink and Jack reached out to press a finger to one of them, taking his temperature. It was a little raised, but he was bundled in a sweatshirt and the sheets of Jack’s bed, so not alarmingly so.

“What did you just do?” Bitty asked.

“Took your temperature.”

Bitty’s eyes went wide. “You can do that?” He pushed himself up on an elbow.

Jack shrugged. He looked away. Bitty shifted closer to him, and Jack looked back.

“What else can you do?”

 

* * *

 

Bitty panted under him, hands pressed against his shoulders to put some space between them. His knees dug into Jack’s sides. His pupils were blown wide. His whole body trembled and Jack could feel it down to his core.

“You taste the same,” Bitty managed, hands tugging on Jack’s clothes and then pushing in the next instant, like he couldn’t decide what he wanted.

“I am the same,” Jack reminded him gently. Bitty laughed and curled a hand around the back of Jack’s neck.

“Jack- Jack. I’m so turned on but you don’t even- do you even?”

Jack hesitated. “I- I can get hard, but I don’t- It’s not the same as it is for you.”

Bitty looked stunned. He tipped his head to study Jack’s face.

“Do you- do you feel this at all?”

Jack lowered himself onto Bitty and Bitty let him. “I feel you,” he whispered into Bitty’s ear. 

Bitty clutched at him, knees digging in. 

“I feel you all the way through me, Bitty.”

Bitty whimpered. He wrapped his arms around Jack’s neck and his legs around Jack’s waist. Jack rolled his hips down against Bitty’s hardness and Bitty whimpered again, rocking up to meet him.

“When we’re this close, I can feel your heartbeat echoing in my chest. I can feel the way you breathe.”

Bitty met each thrust down with one up. His hands scrabbled at Jack’s shoulders and back, trying to find purchase, to cling. Jack reached back and grabbed them, sliding his fingers through Bitty’s and pressing his hands flat to the bed. Bitty whined and chanted Jack’s name.

“You make me feel human,” Jack admitted. “Your heart _is_ my heart, Bitty.”

Bitty cried out, body convulsing, fingers tightening around Jack’s, heels digging into his spine. Jack opened his sensors and felt the twitch of Bitty’s cock as he came in his shorts, tasted the salt of sweat on his skin, heard the hitch of his lungs as he tried to breathe through the pleasure.

He let himself be flooded with Bitty and he filed it away, a memory he would never lose, not tomorrow, not a year from now, not in ten and not in a hundred.

“Jack,” Bitty breathed. “Jack, you stupid, silly, romantic-“ Bitty wiggled his hands free of Jack’s and wrapped his arms around his neck to hold him. He kissed Jack and it tasted like tears.

 

* * *

 

Jack was wire and metal and soldered joints. Jack was electricity tethered into synthetic skin.

Jack did not have a heart. He did not have lungs. He did not even have vocal cords.

Jack did not have a heart, but Bitty shared his and gave him one.


End file.
